Those of us with English degrees are very greived that Acme is currently participating in two 100% Effort initiatives, and considering two more. These are supposed to be company-wide initiatives that preempt all other demands and get complete support. It strikes me that we cannot do more than one thing with 100% of our resources, Click Here to continue reading.
Another bank with a reputation for being well run says that Subprime is affecting its bottom line.
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina: Capital One Financial Corp. on Thursday reported a 24 percent decrease in first-quarter earnings and lowered its full-year profit forecast, citing revised expectations for its mortgage banking business.
The McLean, Virginia-based company, a credit card issuer that continues to expand into retail banking, provided revised earnings for 2007 of $7 to $7.40 per share. In January, Capital One gave guidance between $7.40 and $7.80 per share.
“This is clearly a very challenging time for our mortgage banking business,” Richard D. Fairbank, Capital One’s chairman and chief executive officer, told analysts on a conference call.
Capital One pointed to last year’s acquisition of subprime lender North Fork, which operates banks in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
A leading US securities regulator Tuesday issued a rare warning to investors over the record $321bn of debt being used to buy stocks and bonds.
Ordinary mortals are naturally inclined to be afraid of derivatives. Especially those ordinary mortals who know that the nominal value of all derivatives is around 300 trillion dollars.
But more sophisticated people would like to tell you that there is nothing to worry about. They would tell you that derivatives actually make the market safer.
Steve Randy Click Here to continue reading.
China’s behavior has just been insane over the last couple of months. There is simply no other word for their actions. They are engaging in activities that are so bizarre that I can barely believe that the people running China’s economic policy have enough intelligence to cause their hearts to beat. Click Here to continue reading.
When the high price of gas starts to bother me, I try to keep things in perspective. After all, I am truly a privileged person. People are being forced to go with out electricity so that I can have gas.
You see, oil is something everyone wants, but not everybody can have. So some people Click Here to continue reading.
This from The New Scientist…..
An infection is coming, and almost no one has heard about it. This infection isn’t going to give you flu, or TB. In fact, it isn’t interested in you at all. It is after the wheat plants that feed more people than any other single food source on the planet. And because of cutbacks in international research, we aren’t prepared. The famines that were banished by the advent of disease-resistant crops in the Green Revolution of the 1960s could return, Borlaug told New Scientist.
The disease is Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus (Puccinia graminis), discovered in Uganda in 1999. Since the Green Revolution, farmers everywhere have grown wheat varieties that resist stem rust, but Ug99 has evolved to take advantage of those varieties, and almost no wheat crops anywhere are resistant to it.
The strain has spread slowly across east Africa, but in January this year spores blew across to Yemen, and north into Sudan (see Map). Scientists who have tracked similar airborne spores in this part of the world say it will now blow into Egypt, Turkey and the Middle East, and on to India, lands where a billion people depend on wheat.
Of course to make matters worse, wheat stocks are low….
The threat couldn’t have come at a worse time. Consumption has outstripped production in six of the last seven years, and stocks are at their lowest since 1972. Wheat prices jumped 14 per cent last year.
The whole article is well worth reading.
This from the R-Squared Energy Blog…..
I don’t think I have ever seen the forecasters miss the estimate this badly. They were forecasting a 300,000 barrel decline in gasoline stocks, and instead got a 5 million barrel decline. For the first time in a long time, inventories are now in the lower half of the normal range.
Read the whole post for the details on this. But I have not seen any really good answers for why there has been a stronger than expected drop in stocks. The quick answer seems to be that the refineries are only operating at 87 percent capacity. This is a lower than people had expected. The question is why…..
M&T bank happens to be a bank that we in the Ethereal Land have some familiarity with. So it was of great interest to me to come across this post from Calculated Risk(be sure to read the comments). The post by CR called to my attention this Reuter’s news story…..
Click Here to continue reading.
If Stuart Staniford is wrong, he is making one of the most rigorous wrong arguments I have ever seen. He now has a third essay up making the case that Saudi Arabia is facing involuntary cuts in production.
You would think that his last two essays would have covered all there is to cover with currently Click Here to continue reading.